Andy Gee

Plugin development is widespread and very simple as far as programming goes and as it's unlikely you will find a plugin that accurately fits your needs you should stay with this line of attack. If by chance you are losing faith in your existing developer I recommend you expand your horizons with additional developers. In order to do this you will need to create a complete specification of your needs (or have someone do this for you) so that you can post this specification on freelancer sites or (preferably) via programmer recommendations.

There's really not an awful lot of difference between the two, they have wildly different storage mechanisms but they each have their fairly similar benefits. If you want to learn something that might be a requisite skill for a job, I would also look at alternatives such as time based and column based systems like InfluxDB and the unbelievably fast and flexible ClickHouse. While they may seem like an unlikely fit for a personal bug tracker app, there's no reason not to use them. Since I got into InfluxDB people have been requesting it a lot and I'll be using ClickHouse for all large databases, probably forever. Expand your horizons beyond your competition's.

Given the choice between PHP and Python, there's almost twice as many open source eCommerce projects written in PHP than there are written in Python. If I were you I would have a look through the most starred repositories until you find something you like the look or feature set of.

Python 17k https://github.com/search?q=ecommerce+language%3APHP&type=repositories&l=PHP&s=stars&o=desc

Python 10k https://github.com/search?q=ecommerce+language%3APython&type=repositories&l=Python&s=stars&o=desc

XAMPP is not designed for production use, I highly recommend you read this thread: https://community.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?p=192464 and other threads relating to this. You mentioned your deployment would be on a local network however if the web application will handle company secrets or sensitive information you should not use XAMPP unless every user is trustworthy. If you do use XAMPP, the company should know in advance they will need to port to a production ready web server to expose any part of the system online. If you are limited to Windows hardware you could use WSL2 to install Ubuntu (or other Linux distros) on a Windows system. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

Both tools should can handle all css correctly however bugs can occur. As a user of open source software I feel it's a responsibility to report these bugs whenever they are experienced. For VS yuo can report a bug here: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/new?assignees=&labels=&template=bug_report.md

It may not be a bug though, VS code has many options for formatting code and also many plugins to extend these options further. If you have a formatting issue you could try the vscode-css-formatter here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aeschli.vscode-css-formatter

If none of these suggestions are helpful please provide a little more infomration about the problem you're experiencing.

In my opionon VS is far superior to brackets. Not just because of the incredible list of plugins but also for it's speed and huge list of configurations options.

I cannot recommend highly enough the benefits of proper web hosting for any serious developer. cPanel is definitely not that. With proper hosting you can install MongoDB with just a few commands and it doesn't cost anything. So what is proper web hosting? Well I would not settle for anything less than a VPS with root access. I prefer Ubuntu 20.04 server as there's more range and compatibility of installable software. For small projects I usually install HestiaCP for the hosting control panel, also free.

Once the burden of cPanel is lifted, you will probably find everything a bit easier - and cheaper!

As for the benefits of MongoDB over MySQL, this really only comes into effect for scaling to high volume. MongoDB uses more RAM and it's generally faster because of this. MySQL can run on lower-spec systems and it's fast enough for most things. The chance of noticing a difference while you're on cPanel is unlikely because your server is sharing resources with probably thousands of other users. I cannot recommend highly enough the benefits of proper web hosting for any serious developer. cPanel is definitely not that. With proper hosting, you can install MongoDB with just a few commands and it doesn't cost anything. So what is proper web hosting? Well, I would not settle for anything less than a VPS with root access. I prefer Ubuntu 20.04 server as there's more range and compatibility of installable software. For small projects I usually install HestiaCP for the hosting control panel, also free.

Once the burden of cPanel is lifted, you will probably find everything a bit easier - and cheaper!

As for the benefits of MongoDB over MySQL, this really only comes into effect for scaling to high volume. MongoDB uses more RAM and it's generally faster because of this. MySQL can run on lower spec systems and it's fast enough for most things. The chance of noticing a difference while you're on cPanel is unlikely because your server is sharing resources with probably thousands of other users.

Personally I prefer MongoDB but I use MySQL more frequently for it's small footprint and more then good enough performance.

Generally speaking help desk systems do not interface "deeply" with email providers. Generally speaking either a) copies of messages are forwarded to the help desk (making a copy) b) the help desk periodically checks for new messages and downloads them (making a copy)

The copies can then be organized within the help desk as required. The original emails can be managed as the user requires. Replies are sent out over the SMTP.

Does this help?

If a database tables has had some records added to it, and those records are then deleted the Auto Increment value is not automatically reset to avoid accidentally referencing an incorrect row. (e.g. maybe another reference to that row ID exists somewhere). If that's not a problem you can manually reset it with

ALTER TABLE tablename AUTOINCREMENT = 0;

Alternatively, if you were to TRUNCATE the table (DELETE ALL RECORDS), this would also reset the AUTO INCREMENT value: TRUNCATE TABLE table_name;

I can imagine wanting to move away from Groovy on Grails into a more mainstream solution for this type of application but the answer lies with the owner. Do they want to rip it up and start again - if so Node/ExpressJS would offer a very flexible and rapid development foundation with which to built it. If they want to continue with what they have they should at least be informed development might take significantly longer. Also does the company have a lot of Groovy/Grails developers. If you changed to Node/Express would they adapt. There's really quite a lot to consider when changing software but ultimately you can only advise if you're not in the driving seat.

Yes but it depends on how much you want to integrate it.

In the most simple form you can create a directory, say .../public_html/cms and then dump wordpress in that folder.

If you want the CMS to manage the html, css and javascripot you've created then that would be more difficult. Instead I would port the pages into say wordpress or a better CMS instead of trying to "merge" your code and the CMS code.